Margaret Wertheim is an internationally noted science writer and commentator whose work focuses on the relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. She is the author of Pythagoras' Trousers, a history of the relationship between physics and religion (Times Books/Norton paperback); and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet (Norton). A native Australian, Margaret has a BS majoring in pure and applied physics and a BA majoring in mathematics and computer science. She is a contributor to the New York Times Science Section and an Op-Ed contributor for the Los Angeles Times. From 2000-2005 she wrote the "Quark Soup" column for the LA Weekly (sister paper to the Village Voice) and is currently a contributing editor for both Cabinet, the internationally renowned arts and culture quarterly, and Cosmos (Australia). Her articles have appeared in many other places, including the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Sciences, New Scientist, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Salon and Wired. Margaret has contributed essays to more than a dozen scholarly anthologies including Architecture of Fear (Princeton University Press) and Prefiguring Cyberspace (MIT Press).
Margaret's writing has been included in Best American Science Writing (2003), edited by Oliver Sacks. In 2006 she won the excellence in journalism award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences and in 2004 she was the National Science Foundation's visiting journalist to Antarctica. Her book Pythagoras Trousers was awarded a Templeton Book Prize for Science and Religion, and her television series Catalyst (about science and technology, aimed at teenage girls), won numerous prizes around the world, including first prize (Golden Lion) at the International Children's Film and Television Festival in Cairo.
Wertheim has lectured widely at universities and colleges across America and abroad - including Harvard, Tufts, Oxford University, University of Oslo, University of Sydney, and Princeton Theological Seminary. She has been a keynote speaker at the International Design Conference Aspen, the "Sacred Space" conference at the Ecclesiastical Academy in Tutzing, Germany, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, and the annual meeting of the German Women in Physics Society. In 2007 she was a panelist at the Sundance Film Festival. In 1998, and again in 2006, she was Australia's official spokeswoman for Science Week. In 1998 she also gave a series of lectures in South Africa. Margaret has written and produced interactive videos and television science programs, including the award-winning series "Catalyst," which aimed at teenage girls (for ABC Australia); and the PBS special "Faith and Reason". With her husband, Cameron Allan, she produced and directed "It's Jim's World .... we just live in it," a documentary about "outsider physicist" James Carter. Carter's work was the subject of an exhibition Wertheim curated in 2002 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. She is currently writing a book about outsider science and role of imagination in theoretical physics called "Imagining the World," (to be published by Walker & Company).
In 2003, Margaret founded the Institute For Figuring, an innovative organization devoted to enhancing the public understanding of the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts. (www.theiff.org) The IFF hosts lectures, curates exhibitions, and publishes books on subjects such as the physics of snowflakes, mathematical paper folding, and hyperbolic space. Through the Institute, Wertheim has curated exhibitions on these subjects for galleries and museums in Los Angeles and New York, including Apexart (Summer 2005, New York), Machine Project (Summer 2006, Los Angeles), the Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design (Fall 2006, Pasadena), and the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Opening March 2007, Los Angeles). In Spring 2007 the Institutes' "Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef" will be shown at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburg) as a centerpiece of the exhibition "Six Billion Perps Held Hostage: Artists Respond to Global Warming." Wertheim will also give the exhibition's opening night presentation. The Institute's work has been acknowledged in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time Out New York, Christian Science Monitor, LA Weekly and many other publications.